Guild Wars 2

Yeah, looks like it’s my mistake. SPvP has actual healing numbers appear for the minions whereas PvE does not. It looked like it was working on my Bone Fiend after I got a good scenario to test it with, so I’d assume it works on Jagged Horrors as well. I really dislike the disparity in mechanics shown between game modes.

Turn Flesh of the Master on and test for me again please Bhawb. Just did some tests in SPvP to make sure I wasn’t going crazy, and it stops working when Flesh of the Master is traited.

Edited in: Nevermind, it started working with Flesh of the Master traited?
Double edited: I was being dumb, didn’t have Vampiric Aura actually running. Attempting to test with a Jagged Horror atm.

Triple edit: Works fine in SPvP, broken in PvE. Can anyone else confirm for me? Also broken in WvW. It’s working?

Vampiric Aura does not give Health back to Minions even though they are affected by the buff and they are dealing damage attributed to Vampiric Aura.

It would obviously be a minor quality of life change, yes, but I would assume is a bug regardless. And at the very least would give Jagged Horrors a little bit more staying power.

It appears as though Vampiric Aura does not siphon health back to any of my minions when they deal damage. They do, however, deal the damage attributed to Vampiric Aura. Because they have the buff active on them, and they are definitely dealing damage from Vampiric Aura, I would assume that they should also be siphoning health back to themselves per hit.

Ah, I see what you’re saying. Assuming perfect scenarios, yes, I believe you would be correct.
As it stands, however, the healing component of Sigil of Leeching is an enormous reason to actually use it. This means that there are times where the Sigil will be off of cooldown, since you have had no reason to weapon swap prior. If you need to heal with the Sigil, you can not enter Death Shroud until you first weapon swap. Otherwise you do not get the heal.
“So the only time that this actually “costs” you the healing is if you go into shroud, consuming the proc without healing, and then leave shroud and weapon swap, all within 9s of first entering shroud.” This happens often in less than ideal situations.
“If you stay in shroud for at least 9s” This does not.

But at this point, I feel like it is more arguing semantics.
The issue is that the Sigil can potentially lose a large component of its use because Arenanet implemented a mechanic that was intended to benefit Sigil users. Not hinder them.

What? Swapping into Shroud procs the Sigil if it’s not on cooldown, consumes the sigil and does not heal you. The only way you are not “missing out on anything” is if you weapon swap immediately upon Sigil CD, and then promptly pop into Death Shroud. This is not exactly optimal, and largely restricts Death Shroud use if you’re looking to gain back that thousand HP.

The rather recent change to Death Shroud that allows it to trigger on weapon swap Sigils ends up proc’ing Sigil of Leeching and proceeds to consume the proc, but does not grant your character any healing. Please either allow the healing while in Death Shroud, or disable the proc from being consumed while in Death Shroud.

For god’s sake, make Death Shroud not consume the proc or allow it to heal while in Death Shroud. This is ~100 HP/second I’m missing out on now.

Bhawb.7408:

That graph is off, my minion heal on hit is 94 without BT and with 1215 healing power in sPvP.

It doesn’t scale with Healing Power. The tooltip is incorrect.
The graph is fine.

Stop. Looking. At. Tooltips. They are incorrect. They are misleading. They are, somehow, worse than they were before. Sadly.

Vampiric Master does not scale with stats, nor does Blood Fiend. Tooltips say they do. Dagger #2’s Siphon is completely out of whack and does not correspond with in-game numbers in the slightest. Bloodthirst screws with a few tooltips, but the in-game numbers appear to be working correctly.

For now, test kitten. Don’t go off of tooltips. Just because it says something, doesn’t mean that’s what it is, or what it does.

Rennoko.5731:

So this makes me rather sad… I was really hoping that traiting for, and pumping Healing power would finally show returns for these skills…. and all it really seems like they did was make the basic siphon skills better without bloodthirst…. Scaling still awful?

Arianna.7642:

Gut feeling tells me that they were attempting to make siphoning “viable” without having Bloodthirst be an absolute necessity. First impression makes it appear as they though missed the mark by a rather large margin, once again. Good thing nothing was expected.

Imho, they probably feel that siphoning is “fine”, and wanted to “open up build diversity”, so they hacked Bloodthirst and gave most of the Trait baseline. What they should have done was buffed the siphons to where they’re at now, kept Bloodthirst the same value, and added scaling onto that Trait. Oh hey congrats Arenanet, you now have a specialized role that offers a siphon playstyle.

Rennoko.5731:

Can anyone comment on scaling numbers for siphons?

They appear nearly identical to prior. Buffed without Bloodthirst, absolutely no change with it. The only exception is Vampiric Master, which had its healing reduced.

You -might- be able to get higher than previous with a ridiculous amount of Healing Power, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

1173 Healing Power with Bloodthirst is netting a 45 heal on Vampiric hits.

Revamped: Their little tooltip “fix” screwed all tooltips up. Do not go by any of them.

Andele.1306:

To be fair i call it bloodlust too, but yeah devs dont have a good track record of being honest, but they usually fix stuff within 2-4 months of it getting out of hand on the forums.

You’re a player that does not have thousands of players looking to them for the correct information. I would take most of what they say with a grain of, if not more, salt at this point.

Bhawb.7408:

yet a dev told us specifically .

The Devs literally just called Bloodthirst “Bloodlust”. I’m not sure how close to law their word actually is, regardless of whether it is their game or not.

Vampiric is ticking for 34 damage on the Developer Preview without Bloodthirst (Deathly Invigoration, Transfusion and Vampiric Rituals were taken). The tooltip on Vampiric Rituals states that they do 55 damage and 52 Healing, without Bloodthirst. I assume this means that Rituals and Precision both got the Vampiric treatment. This is either going to be a direct overall nerf due to their kittenty number tweaks, or a completely moot change in a heavy siphon build. Any changes to Dagger #2 remain to be seen, which scares the everliving crap out of me given the ridiculous nerf to Bloodthirst. Edited in: Assuming Dagger #2 gets the same treatment, it’s getting brought down ~20 HP/Tick. Not enormous, but it’s not like it’s necessary. A bit ridiculous, if I was to be asked.

Vampiric Master was, frankly, a complete nerf. The damage component should have been in-game from the start, being a siphon. It was a bug fix coupled with a nerf to the sustainability.

Gut feeling tells me that they were attempting to make siphoning “viable” without having Bloodthirst be an absolute necessity. First impression makes it appear as they though missed the mark by a rather large margin, once again. Good thing nothing was expected.

Andele.1306:

Does Vampiric Master even deal damage? Im pretty sure that the entire affected by Poison so im not sure if its a siphon and not just a heal…
Sodding exceptions and bugs and complicated for no reason mechanics (reason why i hate my native language, its only real rule is there are always exceptions).

Not at the second. It’s speculated via the patch notes that it will with the October 15th patch, but numbers on it are up in the air.

I still feel that, in comparison to the rest of the Traits that we have, that Vampiric Master is going to be far too strong for a Master level trait if it does end up doing armor-ignoring damage on top of good siphons. Not in comparison to the game as a whole, as our siphons are obviously lacking anyways, but when comparing Necromancer traits side by side, there is a clear balance discrepancy. Which could end up being good if a revamped Vampiric Master is our intended balance spot.

Bhawb.7408:

Its a buff at most 114 damage per hit, with minions averaging a hit every 3 seconds in ideal conditions its a DPS buff of 38 at the highest possible value per minion, or a total DPS increase of 228 with a full 6 minions and perfect conditions. That isn’t much.

On the other hand, no it does not scale with healing power, although I believe they are going to slowly take it that way along with all other siphon traits.

I should have clarified. It isn’t overly strong in regards to game balance as a whole.
It is extremely strong, however, when placed side by side with other Traits of Master level. Namely, Training of the Master. The only Minion it does not boost damage by at least 30% is that of the Golem. However, it has the additional benefit of being the absolute strongest siphon we have. That, to me, is lopsided balance; when one Trait does something, with another doing it nearly as effectively, but with a massive additional benefit, something is wrong.

No, it does not scale with Healing Power. It’s treated as a Minion trait and is static values. The only thing it scales with is (strangely) Bloodthirst and the WvW Medic buff.

While on this subject though, am I the only nutjob that thinks that Vampiric Master is going to be far too strong of a Master trait if the actual siphon damage is implemented?

Essentially what Leeching Venoms got?

So the general consensus is less about buffing Lifesteal, and more of a rework of the mechanics as a whole that allows it to work without being horribly broken? That was basically the conclusion that I’d come to, which made me wonder what players wanted; a rework at this point in time seems extremely unlikely, given the current track record of not doing sweeping changes, and I thought/think most players realize that.

Rennoko.5731:

I think most people would like two things:

1. A heavy investment in the blood tree (30 points), means you get sustainable healing to make that investment valuable. If that also takes Apoc gear, or Clerics gear or whatever, then so be it, but the option to do this should be there. Currently there is nothing at the 30 point in blood to justify going that high.

2. Apoc/Clerics gear should actually be worth using. The healing power scaling should be such that if we want to get sustain healing we can.

I agree that if you buff up siphon across the board, then everyone will just run 30/20/0/20/0, and be unstoppable. But if you buff up scaling on the siphon traits significantly, then necros will start taking healing power, and that adds diversity.

I for one would like a build defining 30 point trait in blood. Of course they didn’t rework the tree so this won’t happen this time around.

While I completely understand this, I feel as though it does not mesh with what Arenanet has in mind for the Necromancer. And as it stands, their vision of the Necromancer apparently trumps any and all community feedback given by the Necromancer populace.

Frankly, I’m under the impression that they A) Never intended the Healing stat to be a heavily used stat in general, and B ) Never will intend for Necromancer to make much use out of the Healing stat. This is apparent in their nearly static life siphoning numbers, the inability to heal through Deathshroud and the trash scaling of Healing power across the board on the Necromancer abilities, giving it one of the least effective return on investments in terms of stat points. Outside of Well of Blood, it is nearly a worthless stat for our Profession in particular, sadly.

Linguistically Inept.6583:

stability doesnt affect conditions… just hard CC (daze, stun, launch or whatever would cancel the charge not hold it in position), immob still works on stabbed targets (because its a condition – soft cc)

Gotcha. This is what happens when you don’t touch a game for a while.

Below images were spammed during Golem charge. The big tick definitely occurs more than once throughout the duration. How many times it occurs, I don’t know. It was vividly shown as three ticks with the screenshots I got from this one instance, however. Lower left of the screen, all three are 1629 on a collateral dummy.

Edited in because it made me laugh upon realization; the drop in the Dummy’s HP is pretty explanatory in terms of damage dealt within the span of a few seconds.

Double edited in to address being stationary until death; The only explanation I have in that case is magic. Arenanet magic, to be exact. The same magic that allowed us to have a third of our expected downed HP for a good half of the year, as well as our class mechanic to be broken in a multitude of ways, etc, etc. Shrugs

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

I started and was killed in the same spot ^^

Were you pinned against the fence and blown backwards after death/being downed/after Charge stopped?

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

Ah k, although I’m fairly sure that the ground was flat and the fleshy had no conditions or anything at all on them that would keep them in one spot, oh well, its good to know what actually happened.

Fleshy gets Stability during Charge, probably to prevent this issue from being abused via Conditions. I want to say that he does not Charge through the fences themselves, which was probably the culprit from first glance.

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

Well now, I was in the middle of a fight with this necromancer when he suddenly made his flesh golem spam the charge knockdown multiple times in the same spot, (it continued to hit me for about 7,500 damage over about 1.5 Maybe 2 seconds) I have never seen this happen before, anyone care to explain?

If you get trapped between an object with collision that makes it impossible for the Golem to pass through, it will continue to do damage to the target (And I’d assume those within the area of the Charge effect) for the duration of its Charge ability.
Easiest way to see it is against the immovable Target Dummies in LA.

Bug? Probably. But it is an extremely satisfying feeling on the Necro’s side, particularly if they know that they had enough situational awareness to purposefully CC you into a corner like that.

Edited in to address above; No, that is exactly what the Golem does. An enormous amount of small ticks, just as Bhawb said, with the occasional 1.xk damage tick. Go check on the test dummies. The chat log is also scrolled up (Allowing you to see “Slash” damage, which is the Golem’s auto), which leads me to believe that OP was either killed as they got blown out from the Charge, or proceeded to fight the Necro after taking said damage, realizing only after their death that they died extremely quickly.

What exactly do people want lifesteal to do? I will attest to it not being of the highest caliber currently, but is the Necro community expecting a 15 point investment into Blood to instantly make them invincible in a 1v1 scenario?

Is kind of absurdly strong, or am I going crazy?
(1) +28 Condition Damage
(2) 5% chance when hit to steal Health on next attack
(3) +55 Condition Damage
(4) After using your healing skill, your next attack skill steals health
(5) +100 Condition Damage
(6) 7% of Vitality becomes Condition damage.

To me, this simply looks like a far better version of Rune of the Undead, combined with Vampirism. What the kitten?
Edited in: You lose out on ~50 Toughness, have the potential to gain more Condition damage, and have the loss in Toughness offset by the fact that the Leech is ~900 in both damage and heals. Stocking up on this before the price goes up?

Current stat allocations given by traits make sense from Arenanet’s perspective; ie, on paper, it works. Which is how they’ve been balancing Necro. So it’s logical from their approach.

Spite is the direct damage/hybrid line. Axe synergizes with this. Power for Ghastly Claw damage, Condition duration for Burning inflicted via GM trait, as well as defensive-based conditions, giving Spite some defense which, in Arenanet’s eyes, gives us some form of attrition.
Curses is obviously condition damage via Scepter, Precision to synergize with the on-crit effects within the tree.
Death Magic is Toughness for defense, and Boon Duration for defense via Regeneration and, if we actually had it, Protection.
Blood Magic is rather obvious.
Soul Reaping is once again for synergy within the tree and/or Crit Damage being the only stat that didn’t directly fit into one of the prior trees.

It’s fantastic on paper.

Edited in to actually address the OP; You want to change the stat allocations based on traits assuming players take certain builds. Understandable given cookie-cutter and viable specs, but in reality the setups you’ve suggested give far less synergy within the trees than those that are already present. Swapping Spite, Death and Soul Reaping stats around would give the optimal number of stats for a particular build. However, assuming a player invests 30 points into Spite, that Critical Damage is then worthless due to having no Precision. The Boon Duration is nearly worthless due to gaining only one particular boon. And the Condition duration is approximately as useful as the Boon duration is in the Death Magic line; that is, it doesn’t really matter one way or the other. Boon duration, however, compliments the passive defense that the Death Magic line portrays. Which means that it works aesthetically. The only time that stat allocation would be more beneficial is with the standard cookie cutter builds, which is not what Arenanet is advocating.

If you seriously want us to use Death Shroud as an actual mechanic of our Profession, then for god’s sake, make it synergize with the weapons we have equipped. Scrap the garbage we have right now and actually implement something that makes us -want- to use Death Shroud.

All I’ve been seeing as of late are double standards being thrown around left and right in the balance department.

I feel like this topic’s been beaten to hell and back for the nth time.

Here’s a better question; -How- would Minions scale with our stats? Are they going to scale with our Power, hit like trucks, and be one-shot for having a lack of HP? They die quickly as it is right now; would anyone taking them really want them dead even faster? Are they going to be sturdy, un-killable kittens that hit for pitiful damage? As it stands, Minions are balanced around… Being Minions. They’re utilities that can be boosted through Traits. It makes the balance passes far easier than it would otherwise be if they scaled with our stats at all. If they were to scale with our stats and balance remained intact, we would gain something at a loss to something else. The only stat set that would keep them remotely on par with what they are currently is Solder gear. It would be a pointless change.

Softspoken.2410:

Honestly, a tether-like effect that doesn’t proc a negative effect when you stay close to the source for the duration is highly counter-intuitive. When there’s a line between you and an opponent, getting further away is a pretty typical reaction to try and break that line (sort of like stretching it until it snaps), and breaking the line is how you break the effect.

As it is, yeah, the line encourages a person to run, similar to any strong effect that’s proximity based (Like Wells, or the dagger 1 chain, maybe?) but the Torment being applied will discourage that, or at least punish for it.

It is somewhat counter-intuitive for the enemy, but not necessarily the ones casting it, as they want to keep the enemy within close proximity while punishing them for moving out of that proximity. It would be up to the enemy to decide whether it was better to eat the punishment for running (As it should be), or incur the wrath of the Necromancer at close range for the duration of the ability. As it stands in the current iteration, it is simply “Necromancer is tethering me? Better run away, because the punishment for staying engaged is disproportionately larger than running.” It is a motivator to run, as opposed to actually making the enemy feel the need to stay engaged.
Regardless, it would better serve the purpose Arenanet has in mind for keeping an enemy locked into combat with us if the effects were swapped. That is, running away would more severely punish the enemy, while remaining engaged would lessen the impact of the ability… Which is what the intent appears to be. This would then allow us the benefit of strategic play in being able to manipulate whether we actually want the enemy to remain in combat with us, or whether we want them to incur whatever penalty that would befall them if they disengaged.

On top of which, the only way Torment is likely to be anywhere near a “severe” punishment is if the one applying Torment is in a condition build. A tether that is affecting “nearby” targets is not assisting a condition user as much as it would a main-hand Dagger user, who is probably going to be relying on such an ability more than the condition user.. It’s just completely out of whack and doesn’t synergize. But then, I guess that’s the life lesson for a Necromancer currently.

Thinking this through a tad more and looking at the current uses that Torment will probably be seeing makes me think this is an even worse idea; The concept of Torment was to deter players from being mobile and moving around. Necromancers will opt to use Fear as a means to inflict more damage by making foes mobile, as opposed to using Torment as a deterring factor in moving. Great usage of Fear, absolutely horrible idea from Arenanet as it goes in the complete opposite direction of the intended use. So how, exactly, is this expected to assist us in the problem of keeping a player in combat with us? It’s not. Frankly, it probably shouldn’t be implemented in the current iteration or it’s just going to be another random condition added to an already rather meager arsenal. Give us Hexes back.

Tainted Shackles should also be a tether that inflicts damage, controls, or does some other detrimental effect if that tether is broken (due to distance from opponent) while it is in casting. Not the other way around, as this is counter-intuitive and would give the opponent a reason to actually run away, aside from simply becoming bored with the fight. This would also see many more strategic uses, whereas it is currently nothing more than ‘Stay on enemy after tethered’.

I really just don’t understand their design direction. Where the hell is the genius from GW1?

leman.7682:

“Necromancer Death Shroud 5

As the professions in Guild Wars 2 continue to grow, we will continue to find ways to augment them and add potency to their arsenal of abilities. With the next balance update, necromancers will be unlocking their fifth ability within Death Shroud: Tainted Shackles. This skill will cause nearby enemies to be inflicted with conditions and controlled if they don’t take very quick action.

New condition

_With the introduction of Tainted Shackles, we’ll also be adding a new condition to the game: Torment. This condition is designed to play around with movement, one of our fundamental combat mechanics. Enemies under Torment will take damage periodically; as they move, they’ll take even more damage. In looking to expand the condition diversity of thieves and mesmers, we decided to include Torment skills for those two professions as well."

See, this actually scares me more than it makes me feel optimistic.

Let me preface this by asking; What does one need to take out mobile Professions? My answer is that you need A ) Enough firepower to take them out before their mobility really kicks in, and/or B ) Mobility that is approximately on par with that of their own.

Now, this change appears to, rather than increasing our own mobility, attempt to take it away from our opponents. The issue arises when the benefit from disengaging is disproportionately higher than that of staying engaged and taking the damage. Torment will need to be damaging enough where it is a very serious threat to anyone with enough mobility that they can disengage, or else it is simply another Bleed with a tiny bit of variance in damage output. From Arenanet’s current track record, their take on high-damage conditions that are dependent on what the player is doing is -not- something anyone should be putting a lot of faith into. Retaliation and Confusion being the two examples from the past. On top of all of this, they are additionally giving two of the already extremely mobile Professions access to this condition. What in the kitten? I can guarantee, right here and now, that both the Thief and the Mesmer can and will be using this condition to an exponentially higher degree of viability than we will ever see possible.

That is addressing concerns for Torment alone. Moving on to Deathshroud 5; This, to me, appears as if it is giving the enemy players more incentive to disengage, rather than assisting our problem of remaining engaged. First off, you need to be near an enemy to use it. This means that Arenanet’s intent is a combo based off of Dark Path. #2 -> #5, and pray the enemy is stupid or naive enough to remain in combat with us so that they become immobilized/stunned/knocked down/whatever. This does, literally, nothing for our issue of actually remaining locked in combat with an enemy. The only way this is changeable is whether or not Tainted Shackles has an additional condition built in a la Cripple or Chill. If this does turn out to be the case, fantastic. I hope you’re a Power build so that you can spam away on those Life Blasts while in Death Shroud, waiting for your enemy to get CC’d.

The real issue is something they actually outlined very blatantly.

This condition is designed to play around with movement, one of our fundamental combat mechanics.

movement, one of our fundamental combat mechanics.

We. Do. Not. Have. This. That is the issue. Right here. No amount of damage is going to change this. A re-work away from the ideals of simplicity into something that can be remotely complex (Leeching movement speed away from an enemy and turning it into our own, some form of Hex that hinders the enemy while being harder than a standard condition to remove, some form of debuff that actually makes the enemy fear becoming disengaged with us) is what is necessary at this point. This is also what made Guild Wars 1 such a fantastic game. It was not simple. There were counters to counters that were then countered by specifics that were built to do nothing but counter a counter. We don’t have that right now. And until we do, nothing is really going to change. The core mechanics are simply “What you see is what you get”.

This just in:

Patch Notes for June 11th, 2013

Necromancer
-Reworked the 25 point Death Magic minor trait. Jagged Horrors now have a 75% chance to cause Burning for 2 seconds on a critical hit.
-Added Death Shroud Skill 5: Summon Jagged Horror. Summons a Jagged Horror that applies the Disease condition. This is the equivalent to Bleed, but stacks in duration instead of intensity. This Jagged Horror degenerates 50% faster than normal. 60 second Cooldown.

Edited in: Hot fix for June 16th, 2013
-Addressed a bug that disabled the use of the active abilities on the Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend, Bone Minions, Flesh Wurm, Flesh Golem, and Shadow Fiend.
-Death Shroud 5’s Jagged Horror now degenerates at a 75% increased rate and does not apply trait effects.

Edited in: SotG for June 30th, 2013
~
Necromancer
We believe that the addition of not one, but two new conditions into the Necromancer’s arsenal will put them on an even footing with the rest of the Professions in Tournament-level gameplay. They are now the masters of condition application, and with the newest Death Shroud ability, all builds will have a reason to use it both offensively and defensively. We will hold off on any more large changes to see where the balance rests when the new Meta-game develops.
~

Taking bets? Anyone? Anyone?

This would still be brutally strong for any legitimate Minion Master. Blood Fiend alone would be healing for an additional 3k overall if even 50% siphoned back into minions… Per hit. Your minions would essentially never die, or need to be focused and destroyed almost instantly, before they had a chance to actually gain sustained healing.

Mind you, from a PvE perspective, this actually does not sound like a bad idea at all.

HiSaZuL.2843:

If you want free might stacks w/o help while staying full MM buy some embers :P
Those pets spam double and oncasionally tripple fire field and almost immediatly at the start of combat. As long as you can time it right you can get some nice might stacks from 2 bone minion explosions + staff. Toss in some burning from bone fiend and/or flesh wurm.

They’re not useable in dungeons anymore as far as I’m aware. Nor WvW. I remember running around WvW with ~4 Ogre Pet Whistle pets, an Ember and my entourage of Minions. Made for quite the hilarious sight.

As far as Minion DPS goes, assuming the Minions are alive, nearly no other utility in-game is going to beat them in terms of sustained damage. If you’re honestly convinced that the damage output from them is trash, you need a reality check.

Since the subject has been brought up, here’s a question that I’ve never really found an answer to;
What is the approximate base Power stat on the Flesh Golem, and would it be worth it to actually get him Might?
Assuming his base Power stat is at a low value, and the reason he does a modest amount of damage is due to his base damage, does this not mean that getting him as much Might as possible is actually very worthwhile?

Softspoken.2410:

Then the display is always shown rounded to a full percentage point, even if there is a fractional percent. One of the reasons I’m so sure of this is Gluttony. If we can gain life force in increments besides whole percentage points, why not be able to lose them similarly?

Gluttony allows a skill to gain a fraction of a percent instead of rounding up? Which one? I’m honestly curious.

Torqky.3682:

I think it works like this (It changes alot cuz of dem necro bugs):

Each hit gets rounded since damage gets converted into life force . We have a certain amount of health in DS (around 70 percent of normal life give or take depending on how far you invest in soul reaping). So if you have 20k life, you may get around 14k Death shroud life. It will take that 14k number and convert it to life force % :Each percent of life force would be 140. The damage you take gets converted into rounded life force % which does take account your toughness. But on small consecutive hits or condition ticks, the damage may get rounded up making it seem like toughness isnt helping. The last hit that gets you to 0 life force will never cut into your health pool. That is why we can jump off cliffs and survive no matter what % life force. These complicated mechanics make bugs rampant with our class and balancing a nightmare.

This is more or less what I theorized seven months ago, but never confirmed due to becoming inactive;

Edited in; Actually Red, that might be -exactly- what it is. If a number is over some sort of threshold, it rounds up to 1%, regardless of how low the damage may actually be in comparison to what percent of Death Shroud it may have actually taken out. I recall that while doing my test, the Orrian used the one multi-hit skill with the same animation as Necrotic Bite. That’s ~5 hits of semi-low damage, which may very well have skewed results drastically if each one of those hits accounted for 1% of my Lifeforce bar every time. It would also explain why my Lifeforce seems to drain so rapidly while under heavy Conditions. It would even explain why low-damage, many-hit channeled abilities seem to destroy us (Or at least me).

It’s good to see that people are getting back into the hard numbers though.

Kravick.4906:

We barely get any attention at all so this “break stuff they’ve tried to fix” thing is very rarely seen by us. As I said, all we ever get is tool tip fixes. Kinda hard to screw that up really.

And yet they still manage it on occasion. Glorious, isn’t it?

Oh come on guys. Was there anyone that seriously did not expect this? It’s a pretty well known fact that when they do something (Anything) to the Staff, that they break something else with the Staff traits in the process. Look at the running issues we’ve had with Chilblains.

This time, since Chilblains has already gone through that mess, it was the rest of the Marks’ turn.

The only thing that this shows is that Arenanet really doesn’t learn from… Well, anything. But that was already known by anyone that pays attention.

Wasn’t DS a Stunbreak that got reverted?
I doubt an already implemented and then taken away suggestion would fly.

Andele.1306:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_historical_traits#Necromancer_traits; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_UzwdXK5CU and for lich http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfE_Xu9H1Bw at 11ish minutes – just from beta 1 to 2, on the old press demo/alpha lich dropped a orb/urn that had around 50k hp (but low armor) and made lich immortal till destroyed (2 was a 3 second 1 minion spawn, 3 the vuln, 4 aura of chill, 5 aura of fear), DS let you absorb life force while in in and upon exiting worked like spectral walks second activation (you ported to where you entered DS).
Also we had pretty much permanent stability, perma retaliation, DS was a stun break and in addition to corruptions there were sacrifices that gave condition like effect for user hp, also like every 4th ability siphoned hp (as seeon on warhorn and staff in TBs video).

Also sweet old 50% damage reduction for 11 seconds on a 60 second cooldown from Sarmor…

Oh hey Andele, thanks for that. That was actually the exact link I was looking for to cement this theory:

Sadly, I think the core issue with the Necromancer goes a little bit deeper than most people are giving it credit for. As in, we seem to be based off of one of the first few iterations of Guild Wars 2 as a whole, where combat was -not- supposed to be burst-dependent, and was supposedly more drawn out. We don’t appear to have gotten nearly as many iterations as the other Professions have as the game evolved, which threw this Profession to the wayside. And now that the game is actually released, a proper fix would probably take far more manpower than Arenanet is willing to pour into the Necromancer.

The most blatant, indisputable example of this? Look at our Downed Life issue. Directly from Jon himself:

Ok we found a good repro case. It has to do with how death shroud and downed used to interact. I will get someone on it today and try and get a fix to you all asap.

How long ago was the iteration to change us from being dependent on Death Shroud when downed to it actually being our core mechanic? I’m rather certain that this was months prior to release. Which means that we probably haven’t had a real iteration pass in approximately that long.
That’s not good.

Guys, seriously. Our balance and performance issues are not nearly as surface deep as a lot of you are thinking. The pace at which the Necromancer in Guild Wars 2 was being updated on the design curve fell exponentially behind in comparison to where Guild Wars 2 actually evolved to.
If people would actually look up previews and blogs about how the game played during the early phases, and what our skill set, traits and Profession mechanics actually were back then, we fit what Arenanet had in mind for us -perfectly-. We were the epitome of an attrition class that locked players into combat with us.

The issue was that the game evolved from what was once longer, drawn out battles into faster-paced burst combat. In order to make sure Necromancers were not simply “Wait out enemy’s cooldowns, whittle away, have no chance to lose”, Arenanet axed the vast majority of options that made us an attrition based Profession because who wants to play against a Profession that will inevitably win, but take forever to do so?

This would have been perfectly fine if they had actually -allowed us to keep up with the pace of the game’s changes-. But they didn’t. We fell to the wayside, as is apparent by our abundance of absurd issues, our horrible lack of trait synergy, our wretched Weapon sets, our terrible AI, and faulty Profession mechanics. It was even more pronounced after they made the swap from Traits being anything the player desired to being a tier-based system. The build variety for Necromancers were gutted, possibly more so than other Professions.
What Arenanet did was say “Oh hey, we have to change the Necromancer so that they’re not brokenly strong. But we won’t run any actual balance passes because what they were at point X in the game’s life was perfectly fine. They shouldn’t need another pass.” This is why you see Arenanet stating that we are fine; because to them, we are perfectly fine on paper given the current iteration they have down for the Necromancer Profession.

I’m not sure how this is even something that can be argued. Take a look at our bugs, take a look at our traits, take a look at what was taken out of our Profession. The link Andele provided by itself shows that we -did- have the tools for attrition… At one point in time. They were simply taken away from us because of X and Y issues.

Edited in: Does anyone else remember when Dodge wasn’t actually an invulnerability, but was… A dodge? That’s another marker in the design phase for us, given that we didn’t rely on dodging to a degree as high as the other Professions.

Arianna.7642:

Imagine, for a second, that you as a player, are cloned. This clone of you, with the exact same skills, knowledge, overall stat tally, reflexes, etc, etc, decides they enjoy playing a Profession other than a Necromancer. There are no differences between the two of you in terms of the ability to play the game. The only difference is that you are playing two different Professions.

Now you fight each other.

The players here stating that Necromancers are in a good position mean to tell me that the end result of such a scenario would not be skewed in favor of the Profession that is not the Necromancer? And if such a stance is taken, how?

Edited in: To take this a step further, as there are bound to be people attempting to skew such a statement in their favor, imagine that both you and your clone are attempting to fill in the same role. This should get rid of the ‘But I’d take a build that would counter their build’ argument (Which is absurd as well, given the assumption that if you are capable of taking such a counter-build, this said clone is just as capable), as well as possibly give a tad more insight into the issue.

flow.6043:

I know what you’re saying, but still: I firmly believe that in an arranged 1v1 necros can counter other classes better than the other way aroud.

This is a very different issue from the hypothetical scenerio that you set up.

I should really have just omitted that bold part, shouldn’t I have?
Would “Now you face off in an attempt to see who accomplishes the set goal in a more efficient manner” be a better wording for it?

flow.6043:

I wrote the whole paragraph under the assumtion that I (as you set the premise) would fight my own clone, and therefoe be equally skilled.
And yes, I still believe that especially then necros can counter so many others in 1v1.

But you can not counter someone of equal skill level, assuming that they will counter you just as well. If you counter someone that is countering you, but has equal skill, it results in a fallacy. You can’t counter something that is equivalent to you. Thus the entire argument is that you’re put into the same style of gameplay/role/whatever, with differing Professions attempting to accomplish the same goal. The issue is that the other Professions can produce the same results, but in a more efficient manner. That is the whole premise of the entire topic, and has been the premise of all complaints in regards to this from the very get-go. It’s not “I can defeat another Profession because I know how to play my Profession”. The argument is that what a Necromancer does may work, but it is less efficient than another Profession. As in, it may require more input to extort the -exact- same output. Couple in the fact that there is next to no Risk versus Reward in the game as it stands, and you have a very underwhelming Profession. This is an issue, and may be why you actually do not see the Necromancer population as high as other Professions.

flow.6043:

The test in the link I posted is dated 31 March 2013.

Whoops, thanks. Didn’t check it because it was directly to the Wiki, my bad. Looks like he did approximately what I had done. The only issue I can see is that it was in the Mists. And as we’re finding out more and more, the differences between WvW/PvE and the Mists are… Strange, to say the least.

Kravick.4906:

To answer your question about when they changed DS to a transformation, it was approximately 2-3 months before the game released. The very first BWE they came out and said they had just recently changed DS to a transformation skill and needed feedback on its new functionality from the players.

So nearly a year ago then. I’d be rather inclined to say that our Profession has not seriously been taken into consideration for approximately a year then, at minimum. This is excluding the fact that the iterations that came about that forced the change from Death Shroud being our Downed and into our core mechanic were probably an additional few months.
That’s -really- not good.

Engels is actually correct in regards to Traits having no synergization in comparison to other Profession Traits. Take five minutes, log in-game, create a different Profession, bring them to the Mists and take a look. Our Traits are laughable when put next to those of another Professioon.

Sadly, I think the core issue with the Necromancer goes a little bit deeper than most people are giving it credit for. As in, we seem to be based off of one of the first few iterations of Guild Wars 2 as a whole, where combat was -not- supposed to be burst-dependent, and was supposedly more drawn out. We don’t appear to have gotten nearly as many iterations as the other Professions have as the game evolved, which threw this Profession to the wayside. And now that the game is actually released, a proper fix would probably take far more manpower than Arenanet is willing to pour into the Necromancer.

The most blatant, indisputable example of this? Look at our Downed Life issue. Directly from Jon himself:

Ok we found a good repro case. It has to do with how death shroud and downed used to interact. I will get someone on it today and try and get a fix to you all asap.

How long ago was the iteration to change us from being dependent on Death Shroud when downed to it actually being our core mechanic? I’m rather certain that this was months prior to release. Which means that we probably haven’t had a real iteration pass in approximately that long.
That’s not good.

flow.6043:

I actually believe that in such a scenario, where you build to counter the other class in a duel, the necromancer will be victorious in most fights. In fact the only classes who wouldn’t lose all the time would be those with the ability to stealth. All others could be countered and focused down rather easily.
Then again 1v1s were never really an issue with necros. And neither is it in this thread, it’s original post was about tPvP where teamwork outshines the dueling capabilities of a player. That’s where you need better mobility and boon access a lot more than in 1v1s.

Which would be fantastic if you could counter someone with the same skill levels as you, except you can not, based off of the assumption that they are capable of playing on par with you, which is what the entire topic is based off of; That is, assuming equal skill in the playing field, why bring a Necromancer into any form of PvP when a different Profession can accomplish the exact same manner of thing the Necromancer seeks to accomplish, but in a far more efficient way.

Andele.1306:

Degen is 4% pre second, LF pool is around 59% up to 77% of your hp,

In regards to this, has anyone actually tested this since my topic about it? As far as I’m aware, there has been absolutely no testing on Death Shroud health numbers since this? I haven’t actually seen any updated facts, which leads me to believe that we’re simply going off of Arenanet’s word that they actually fixed Soul Reaping, since it was not functioning as intended six months (Being when I created the topic), or even two months ago (Being the last post about it). I’m actually curious.

I think the issue with this argument as a whole is that players aren’t pitting themselves up against someone with the same skill level as themselves.

You face the Ranger xXxLegolasxXx in a hotjoin PvP match for a quick evening skirmish. You, as a Necromancer, absolutely destroy Mister Legolas. This is completely understandable.

Now throw that concept out the window.
Imagine, for a second, that you as a player, are cloned. This clone of you, with the exact same skills, knowledge, overall stat tally, reflexes, etc, etc, decides they enjoy playing a Profession other than a Necromancer. There are no differences between the two of you in terms of the ability to play the game. The only difference is that you are playing two different Professions.

Now you fight each other.

The players here stating that Necromancers are in a good position mean to tell me that the end result of such a scenario would not be skewed in favor of the Profession that is not the Necromancer? And if such a stance is taken, how?

Edited in: To take this a step further, as there are bound to be people attempting to skew such a statement in their favor, imagine that both you and your clone are attempting to fill in the same role. This should get rid of the ‘But I’d take a build that would counter their build’ argument (Which is absurd as well, given the assumption that if you are capable of taking such a counter-build, this said clone is just as capable), as well as possibly give a tad more insight into the issue.

I am almost positive that this has to do with the inability to teleport vertically.

Back in the earlier Betas, things like this would work. And it led to players getting to a lot of areas they otherwise were not supposed to be at. Arenanet “fixed” it by simply disabling the ability to travel vertically via teleport mechanics, as far as I’m aware.

This was just one of those fantastic side effects.